Woebot
Well-known member
It was the underlying powersource for the London Pirate Radio continuum for over a decade.
Ardkore was the touchstone for all that was mental about Jungle, Drum'n'Bass, 2Step and the first wave of Grime. Tracks like Code 071's "Ah London Someting" or Foul Play's "Finest Illusion" seemed like harbingers for everything that was to come, ultra-enlightened glimpses of da future.
But it seems finally as if Ardkore has lost its terror-stranglehold on London's music. I could still hear traces of it in slightly less recent tracks like Danny Weed's "Ratrace" (the sheer improbability of the riddim) or in the confusion of The Surgery's "Shott The Weed" even in the eccentricity of Lady Stush's "Dollar Sign" but Ardkore's underlying strategy of intensification through disorientation and its melted ego delerium (finally!) seem less and less current.
Something like Riko's "Chosen One" or Bruza's "Get Me" seem to drawing up new rules of their own, shocking out with a new power brand of lurching masculinity and blank-eyed righteousness.
Ardkore was the touchstone for all that was mental about Jungle, Drum'n'Bass, 2Step and the first wave of Grime. Tracks like Code 071's "Ah London Someting" or Foul Play's "Finest Illusion" seemed like harbingers for everything that was to come, ultra-enlightened glimpses of da future.
But it seems finally as if Ardkore has lost its terror-stranglehold on London's music. I could still hear traces of it in slightly less recent tracks like Danny Weed's "Ratrace" (the sheer improbability of the riddim) or in the confusion of The Surgery's "Shott The Weed" even in the eccentricity of Lady Stush's "Dollar Sign" but Ardkore's underlying strategy of intensification through disorientation and its melted ego delerium (finally!) seem less and less current.
Something like Riko's "Chosen One" or Bruza's "Get Me" seem to drawing up new rules of their own, shocking out with a new power brand of lurching masculinity and blank-eyed righteousness.